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Supporting the Brigade

As Lynn Holland prepared for her first holiday season as a business owner in King, she found a way to support a youth organization to which her family is connected.

Holland, the owner of Sweets’ Glass Treats, invited the Boys’ & Girls’ Brigade of the Fox Valley to sell wreaths outside her shop.

“This is their biggest fundraiser for the year. They’ll probably sell close to 8,000 wreaths,” said John DeShaney, a volunteer with the Brigade.

DeShaney spent much of Saturday, Nov. 23 in King with his grandson, 11-year-old Mason Waite, of Kaukauna.

For Waite, this is his first year in the Boys’ & Girls’ Brigade, and he was selling wreaths of various sizes.

The Boys’ & Girls’ Brigade is a Christian youth organization for boys and girls who are in sixth through twelfth grade.

Once a week, Waite meets with other sixth graders for team-building activities, which also includes community service.

Area residents are familiar with the Brigade and its Camp Onaway Island on the Chain O’ Lakes.

Holland is among them.

“My daughter started going to Camp Onaway as soon as she was eligible, after sixth grade,” she said. “Once she was in high school, she got to be a leader.”

Today, her 25-year-old daughter, Kerri, is a guidance counselor in Evansville, Ind.

For the past five years, she returned to the Chain to be a leader at Camp Onaway.

In fact, one summer, while in graduate school, Kerri had to make a choice between studying abroad in Greece and volunteering at Camp Onaway.

She chose to volunteer at the camp.

DeShaney’s wife, Mary, works for the Brigade, and he also volunteers at Camp Onaway each summer.

His grandson went to a two-day camp there last summer and is looking forward to next summer’s week-long camp.

“I’m the first person from my family to do the Brigade,” Waite said.

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